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However, because of its broad target readership demographic, Mac OS X: TMM, while thoroughly covering its topic, is not really written for power users - people who want to take their OS X experience beyond the mainstream. If that sounds like you, then you should find the new O'Reilly release, "Running Mac OS X Tiger" by James Duncan Davidson and Jason Deraleau, right up your alley.
Subtitled "A No Compromise Power Users Guide To The Mac," this volume assumes that you have some experience under your belt running Mac OS X and computers in general, so there are no basic installation instruction tutorials on things like what System Preferences do, using the Dock, or how to change your Desktop picture. The target audience is users who are already comfortable with the basic workings of OS X, and who want to truly master getting the most out of this great operating system.
Running Mac OS X Tiger is largely focused on using the Unix command line, although the authors hasten to assure us that they don't assume the reader is a Unix guru versed in the minutia of working with the shell. Consequently, there is enough basic instruction on how to use the command line here to get you up to speed if you're you haven't explored that aspect of OS X extensively yet.
The authors also suggest that the aforementioned Mac OS X: The Missing Manual makes a good companion volume to Running Mac OS X Tiger, and I concur that it should not be a question of one of these books or the other, but nice to have both. At 392 pages, "Running" is less than half as thick as OS X: TMM, but considerably more concentrated in content, with fewer illustrations and more detailed, denser reading text, by which I don't mean to say it is dull - just not as conversational as the Pogue book. There are also plenty of screenshots and graphs to illustrate and amplify the text content.
Running Mac OS X Tiger is structured in 14 chapters and two appendices.
Chapter 1, "Where It All Came From," is actually a concise history of the Mac operating system, covering from the original Mac OS back in 1983-'84, up through System 7, with four paragraphs on the abortive Copland OS and even more on Apple's 1996 dalliance with John Louis Gassee's Be OS, Steve Jobs' NeXT and NEXTSTEP OS from which OS X inherited the Mach kernel, the BSD layer, and the NEXTSTEP programming frameworks which form the basis of the Cocoa APIs. There is a section on Rhapsody, the introduction of the iApps, and of course OS X from the original 10.0 through the cat series of Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and a peek ahead to Leopard (OS 10.5). I thoroughly enjoyed this chapter - as nicely organized and executed treatment of the topic as you're likely to find.
Chapter 2 gets down to the business of "Installing The System And Software." Whether you're upgrading from an earlier version of OS X or doing a fresh install, this chapter will help you get Tiger up and running along with other software, including ways to install Unix applications. Steps covered include backup strategies, i.e.: we're and what to back up before installing, hard drive partitioning, the actual installation, and configuration of Tiger and other upgrades, as well as using Software Update.
Chapter 3, "The Lay Of The Land," examines the many different technologies incorporated into Mac OS X and how they work together. Points covered include how the layout of the OS X filesystem distinguishes it from most other operating systems, making it, the authors contend, "the world's most advanced operating system." They delve into Darwin, the Core Foundation, application and multimedia services, the filesystem, the Finder, the Library, and more.
In Chapter 4, "The Terminal And Shell", we begin to get down to Unix nitty-gritty, and this chapter is basically a tutorial on how to use the Terminal and how to configure various shells in the system, with essential filesystem commands, wildcards, configuring and using bash, using text files, and much more.
Chapter 5 is on "System Startup And Login," noting that quite a bit is going on in the background when Apple logo and spinner appear after you press the Power button. This chapter looks at what gets executed, and what the various boot systems are, as well as the process of what happens when you log in and out of the system. Open Firmware is explained, as are Single-User and Verbose start-up modes, and a great deal more.
"Users And Groups" are the topic of Chapter 6, examining and explaining Mac OS X as a multiuser operating system, as well as tutorial material on how to configure accounts both in the Preference panel and the command line.
Chapter 7 is on the "Open Directory," which is what stores the most important data about your system - lists of users, groups, printers, and so forth. This chapter explains how this part of the OS works and how you can modify data it contains.
"Files And Permissions" are the focus of Chapter 8, explaining the various attributes and permissions files can have, and how to work with them. Also addressed is how to efficiently find files, and there is a section on the Spotlight content search engine included with OS 10.4 Tiger.
Mac OS X also supports a wide variety of disks, which are the topic of Chapter 9, "Disks And File Systems," which gives you the goods on things like the Mac OS X extended filesystem (HFS+), journaling, fragmentation, other supported file systems, network-based filesystems, a tutorial on the OS X Disk Utility program, more on partitioning disks, and a section on disk images.
Chapter 10 is about "Printing," with both local and network printers, including how to use print servers, how to connect with Windows - posted printers, how to share your own inkjet printer with Windows users, PDF Services, and printing from the command line. This chapter will be of interest and use even if you're not a power user, but just want to print your document or picture.
"Networking" is the focus of Chapter 11, explaining everything you probably need to know about connecting to and using networks - - from dial-up configuration to Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
Chapter 12 is about "Monitoring The System," keeping OS X in tip-top shape and where to go to get information about how it is running, such as the Console, the System Profiler, the Activity Monitor, and other tools.
Chapter 13 walks us through "Automating Tasks," using Tiger's Automator feature, using iCal to schedule tasks, scripting apart from the Automator, and using AppleScript.
"Preferences and Defaults" are covered in Chapter 14, which explains how the defaults system, which stores all user configuration data in OS X, is structured, and how to modify its preferences.
Appendix A is a short reference for boot command keys, and Appendix B is a list of other reference resources. A thirteen page Index is also provided.
At $39.95, this book is a bit on the pricy side, but it does deliver plenty of solid information that will be appreciated by its target readership. If you're a Mac OS X power user, or aspire to become one, it should appeal.
Running Mac OS X Tiger: A No-Compromise Power User's Guide to the Mac
By Jason Deraleau, James Duncan Davidson
First Edition December 2005
ISBN: 0-596-00913-5
392 pages,
$39.95 US, $55.95 CA, Ă‚ÂŁ28.50 UK
For more information, visit:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/runmacx2/
Charles W. Moore
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